De Agostini Beatles vinyl series

Posted by: Dave***t on 07 March 2017

Surprised no one's mentioned this - a vinyl plus magazine partwork sort of affair, with the first edition, Abbey Road, currently available for a tenner. 20-odd issues to follow at higher prices.

Many here who'd care will doubtless already have what they want/need, but a pretty good offer for others, like me.

As I understand it, they're (really quite good) repressings of the stereo remasters from not that long ago. Which means I'm only interested in one or two, as I prefer the monos where that was the original 'proper' format. But Abbey Road isn't one of those, and the original vinyl I liberated from my turntable-less parents has lead a hard life, so this first issue is spot on for me.

Picked it up at Smith's earlier and listening to it now, it sounds jolly lovely.

Posted on: 10 March 2017 by Richard Dane

Thanks for posting on this.  I saw them and was curious.  Having said that, I have enough copies of Abbey Road that I'm not in any rush to get another, but good to know that it's of reasonable quality.

Posted on: 10 March 2017 by ianrobertm

@Dave**T - Perhaps the concept of 'Free with a Magazine' was too.... 'low brow',  for this Forum....? But clearly, its useful & helpful to know that these LP's are not bad.

Its interesting that 'Stereo' was very much new fangled, in the early Beatle days, so little effort was probably pit into to the Stereo versions of their earlier offerings. I do not know enough to say which Beatles LP was the first done 'properly' in Stereo. Am sure someone will tell us all, soon....

Posted on: 10 March 2017 by Dave***t

Ha, yes, maybe so. Though I would say that these reissues are very well done, magazine or no. In comparison with my original copy, there's a touch more saturation to the colours on the cover and some minor amendments to the text on the back. Other than that, they're largely identical. But with pristine vinyl, obviously. Pressed by MPO, if that makes a difference for the more vinyl-aware.

I gather the white album will even have the photo card inserts etc, though we'll see if that's borne out.

And though I wasn't around at the time, I believe that the white album was the last one recorded with mono as the main focus, so putting Yellow Submarine to one side, Abbey Road was the first 'proper' stereo release.

Think the next issue will be Sgt Pepper.